


Secrets They Keep

by wxyzzyxw



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Bittersweet, M/M, is fluffy angst a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 00:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9046001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wxyzzyxw/pseuds/wxyzzyxw
Summary: Lavi has been rescued; Allen is not a traitor to the Order yet. A winter day of the gray area between the beginning and the end. (Secret Santa gift for @spiccan on tumblr!)





	

* * *

  _7:02 A.M._

A warm bed, despite threadbare sheets and hollow pillows.

With a blackened hand, Allen quietly traced the constellations of freckles on Lavi’s chest. His tanned skin mimicked a twilight sky in the wake of the sunrise leaking from an open window. Lavi’s arm loosely graced Allen’s waist, their legs were like coiled snakes, but Allen knew it couldn’t last. It couldn’t last because they’d both be off on missions soon, scattered across Europe for weeks until another embrace.

_If they both made it back_ , he morbidly contemplated.

Allen’s fingers danced down a new scar--one of the scars they didn’t talk about--still bright pink and corrupting nearby skin. It matched Allen’s scar almost identically. Any time Allen prodded the subject of his disappearance, Lavi gracefully, angelically, shut him out. Dismissed him in that cheerful, “the past is the past”, toothache smile. And Allen stubbornly understood.

He stealthily attempted to detangle himself from Lavi, for all his aches and pains seemed worse in the morning. Allen barely slipped one peachy thigh free of Lavi before the freezing room bit into his exposed skin. Lavi felt Allen’s shiver in his sleep and unconsciously pulled him closer, first with his arms, followed by his waist and hips nearly crushing the other.

Lavi usually woke up in phases: first his body, then his brain. He’d kiss him on the forehead, softly and tenderly, and actually wake up fifteen minutes later. Allen didn’t mind.

A knock at the door, hesitant on the first rap but forced by the third.

Allen rolled his eyes at the door.

“I know you’re in there, Walker. You’d better not be rolling your eyes at me.”

Lavi made a guttural noise of complaint when Allen attempted to get up.

Another knock. “Walker?”

“He’s deathly ill, Link. You don’t want to catch it,” Lavi mumbled sleepily.

“Don’t encourage him,” Allen whispered.

“That didn’t work the last time, nor shall it work this time. Should I go tell Komui about your late night escapades?”

“Sure. But first, could you tell him how you lost track of me for a whole night?” Allen called out.

Lavi and Allen began giggling to each other, loudly. Lavi began pinching Allen’s sides, for he was too ticklish for his own good, and Allen was red in the face and laughing so hard he might hurl. Link was stewing so hotly outside that the door might melt down.

Eventually, Kanda stomped out of the adjacent room and dragged Allen out.

* * *

_1:58 P.M._

The grim, bitter cold of Russia’s perpetual winter. A joint mission into the mouth of Dante’s hell. A boxcar train, lit with warm yellow that bounced off the snow. But no heat inside to be found, only crushed red velvet cushions and dark cherry wood crafting.

“It was here,” Lavi told Allen.

Allen rested his head against Lavi’s shoulder, his scarf draped over Allen’s shoulders. He’d been dozing the entire way with a book sprawled open in his lap. Lavi’s words and the hazy train car seemed like a strange dream.

“I was kept somewhere with lots of snow and no warmth,” Lavi continued.

Allen understood that if he talked, asked for explanation, Lavi would fold up like origami. Like a paper swan drowning in a dark lake of ink.

“They thought the cold was one of the worst things they could do to a human. God’s light was warmth, and they didn’t know of any different.”

Lavi looked pained, remembering something dark and evil that looked unfamiliar on his face. A softness somehow returned.

“But the snow somehow reminded me of you. The window kept me sane.”

Allen daintily kissed his cheek, fearing that Lavi might enter a spell of silence soon. He opened his mouth to speak, say something to console him, but Lavi spoke first.

“Everything,” he spoke very quietly, “reminded me of you.”

* * *

  _10:58 P.M._

When the Noah inside him became too much, he shut Lavi out. He paced dissociative circles around the Order, hoping Link wouldn’t find him with a gold tint in his eyes.

He climbed up to the roof and lodged between shifting shingles, just to feel his body freeze from winter’s touch. To feel anything other than something clawing, aching, snapping and splintering every bone with gnawing jaws.

It felt like the day Lavi didn’t return home. It felt like every day until he returned.

Lavi would find him eventually, if he wasn’t off on a mission, and settle nearby. Allen wondered if he was recording his behavior and jotting down every muscle movement. As the Bookman in him should do.

_Can I help at all?,_ Lavi would ask, but his voice sounded watered down and warped. It was not the voice of a Bookman.

Allen always shook his head, for fear his words might come out as someone else’s.

And Lavi stubbornly understood.

Dusky charcoal creeped up his extremities while the sun fought its way back to the sky. Internally, the Noah grew weary and quiet as if it had frozen solid.

Lavi helped him inside with a blanket and silent concern, but didn’t speak. Some secrets were better left unsaid.

* * *

_2:03 A.M._

Lavi would lay awake in Allen’s arms long past the other. The warmth of Allen’s breath, skin, hips; the way the moonlight almost gave him an angelic hue with a halo of colorless and messy locks. He didn’t want to waste any spare moments he had left with Allen.

Allen often dreamt out loud and had full conversations with a dead man. Sometimes it was ranting prose, sometimes it was begging, and sometimes it was not Allen speaking. Lavi wondered if his body betrayed his secrets in his sleep, too.

He didn’t dream before he disappeared. But recently, he thrashed and sobbed like rough ocean waters some nights. Other nights he was so still Allen said he forgot how to breathe.

A small smile graced Allen’s lips, and quietly he mouthed, “I love you.”

It was not meant for Lavi; Allen’s eyes were closed. He could never force the words out with his eyes open for fear that Lavi wouldn’t say them back.

Allen mustered up enough courage to say it only once, Lavi’s throat cracked and calloused; he could only kiss him, fuck him, leave him. Could only disappear for months without uttering the syllables back. Disappearing wasn’t on purpose, but it felt like divine punishment.

  
“I love you, too,” he murmured back softly, “but that’s my secret to keep.”


End file.
